22 March 2017 4:35 PM

Some Thoughts on the Death of Martin McGuinness, IRA Terrorist, and our conqueror

Wilful misunderstanding is the biggest problem for anyone trying to write anything serious about anything. Much of this arises from the tribal view so many people take of politics, in which there are two teams and if you don’t support the one, you must support the other. Attack X and you will be accused of supporting Y, even if you don’t and have never said you did.

This is especially troublesome when an Englishman (or in this case a Cornishman) writes about Ireland. An attack on the IRA is assumed to be sympathetic to the ‘Loyalists’. I am not. I loathe the ‘Loyalist’ gangsters and their political front men just as much as I loathe the IRA and their political front men. Disgust at IRA atrocities is interpreted as an apology for or even defence of such events as the Bloody Sunday massacre in Londonderry in 1972. I do not do so.

I regard Bloody Sunday as a dreadful, stupid error for which we were right to express contrition and sorrow, and feel much the same way about the internment of the same period. In general, my view of Ireland is that some sort of sensible Home Rule arrangement should have been made in 1914, but that the largely Unionist North-East should have been excluded from it. That part of Ireland should have been ruled from London, with no devolved government greater than county or city councils.

It seems to me that the past has shown, and the future will show, that if either of the communities in the North-East part of Ireland has the upper hand, the other will suffer. The Stormont Parliament (as wiser Unionists believed when it was founded) should never have been established, for this reason. The problem was that many in London did not want to set up permanent direct rule over Northern Ireland. The transfer of the six counties to Dublin rule was always in their minds. They wanted to do it, as soon as they could get away with it. By creating the strange anomalous statelet of Northern Ireland (unique in the United Kingdom until the Blair government's devolution), the British elite avoided a permanent commitment, and full responsibility, for the province.

For me, it seemed perfectly possible for there to be loyal Roman Catholic Irish subjects of Her Majesty. All that was need was for Her Majesty to be more consciously loyal to her Roman Catholic Irish subjects, many of whom have a lot of time for her, if not for her ministers. Indeed, it seemed to me to be essential that this should be so, and that they would be given exemplary treatment. But they were not given that treatment under Stormont. They were cheated. And it was Stormont’s narrow, fearful, sectarian rule that led to the explosion of 1968 and 1969. And that led to the panic imposition of Direct Rule which should have been put in place 50 years before, and which should in my view have been permanent, wiping out for good the remaining discrimination against Roman Catholics in housing, education, employment and voting.

If your true concern had been such justice, as the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association’s main concern was in 1968 when I first heard of it, then Direct Rule would have been the best possible answer. So, when people ask me what my ‘solution’ might have been, or what a ‘victory’ for my view would look like, I respond by saying ‘permanent direct rule of Northern Ireland from London'. This is not least because I fear that the future will see Northern Ireland’s ‘loyalists’, especially the poorest and least educated of them, suffering discrimination in a United Ireland and reacting badly to it. I have often speculated on the possibility that, in my lifetime, we might see Irish troops on the Shankill Road, ordered there to keep the peace by a Sinn Fein government in Dublin.

But my solution was not to be. A combination of foolish Irish politicians with their insistence on an 'Irish dimension', and cynical American Democratic Party politicians scrabbling to win back working-class Catholic voters who had deserted them over abortion, decided that the Utopian and sentimental goal of Irish unification was in the end far more important than the actual conditions in which the people of that beautiful island shall live. And British politicians, long scornful of people who want to be British, were only too happy to tell Northern Ireland's Unionists that their love for Union was not requited in modern go-ahead multi-culti London.

There. I have now at least partly idiot-proofed what is to come. Total idiot-proofing is just not available, but I have to try.

****

The death of Martin McGuinness is an event of great significance. It is not for me, someone who believes both in the immortal soul and in Divine Justice, to speculate about his fate in eternity. I have quite enough to worry about myself, as most of us do. I can quite understand why Lord Tebbit imagines him in Hell. He is just one of many whose lives have been horribly damaged by Mr McGuinness’s cruel and arrogant belief in political violence, and I think his continuing fury at Mr McGuinness is both necessary and understandable.

And I must wonder whether, as the cloudy darkness of approaching death gathered in the corners of his room, even by day, Mr McGuinness perhaps began to see the faces of those whose deaths he had brought about, clustering silently in great numbers round his bedside, perhaps blank and unreachable and frozen in pain or fear, or perhaps accusing him, some from unknown graves where their bodies still lie hidden and unsanctified, with terrible expressions of unassuaged wrath and grief.

I have not heard him express contrition for these things, or seen him reject the prizes, in power and standing, which he gained from these deaths. I do not speak of material benefits. Like many fanatics, the personally austere Mr McGuinness did not enjoy the more obvious fruits of his power, passing on much of his six-figure ministerial salary to ‘the movement’ while living on the ‘average wage’. And so we are left with the rather awkward words of Christ (Mr McGuinness was said to be a churchgoing Roman Catholic) “Take heed to yourselves: if thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him and, if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee saying ‘I repent’, thou shalt forgive him” (Luke, 17 ,verses 3-4).

‘If he repent, forgive him’. But if he does not repent? I happen to think this is the most interesting and realistic scriptural reference to forgiveness, which lots of ‘modern’ Christians think is given alike to the repentant and unrepentant, to me a plain absurdity. I do not think Lord Tebbit, or many others who suffered at his hands or at his pleasure, think Mr McGuinness has repented. So why should they forgive him, if he is not sorry? Let us all take warning from that, whilst we are in the way, and can do something about it.

But it is for me, and any member of this society, to object strongly to the reverential mentions of Mr McGuinness in the House of Commons today, mentions made in some cases by people who normally rage and shout about 'evil terrorists' who are 'cowards' and who will be 'hunted down for their crimes'. Not in this case. Mr McGuinness died in a sort of spray of verbal syrup, and had until recently been in receipt of British taxpayer's money in the shape of salary and expenses for his role as 'Deputy First Minister' of Northern Ireland. Meanwhile on the BBC and in many other parts of the media yesterday and today he was equated with Nelson Mandela and praised for his supposed 'statesmanship'', though most managed at least to mention his less loveable side as a Godfather of murder and torture.

We are told what a ‘peacemaker’ he was. This, I am afraid, is a terrible lie told mainly to spare our own shame. Far form being a peacemaker, he was among a small group of men who preferred political violence to peaceful protest, even though he lived in a free society and had no excuse for this grisly attitude. He made peace once he had beaten his enemies. You might as well describe Napoleon Bonaparte as a 'peacemaker' for accepting the surrender of those he had beaten in aggressive war.

I was taught long ago that ‘peace’ was not necessarily a virtue in itself. The peace of the mortuary slab, or the peace of the submissive slave, too scared to speak, are not to be desired. Nor is the ‘peace’ of the toady who silences his true feelings because he is afraid of the violent man who has invaded his home and gets what he wants there by menace.

It is the last kind of peace which we have here. The peace of fear. I have seen several articles over the past few days in which it was said that Mr McGuinness and his IRA accomplices had been the ones who gave up the struggle, settled for half a loaf and wearied of blood. They really should stop emitting this drivel. The exact opposite is true, and can be shown to be true by examining the material status of the parties after the end of hostilities.

In 2002, four years after the blasphemously misnamed ‘Good Friday Agreement’ (hereafter referred to by its proper name of ‘The Belfast Agreement’ or its truthful name of ‘The Instrument of British Surrender’), Mr McGuinness told a Dublin rally that returning to violence then would be a trap, adding ‘It’s a fool that believes we will not succeed in achieving a sovereign independent Ireland’.

Indeed it is. What he meant there was that there was nothing wrong with ruthless violence, but that it had achieved its end. It was now to be put aside, not because he rejected or regretted it but because a pretence of legitimacy would bring the final prize. For, as Mr McGuinness well knew, the IRA’s ultimate goal is buried in the Belfast Agreement, an explosion (like so many the IRA plotted) due to go off long after it was planted. The referendum on unification with the Republic, mandated by a clause of the Agreement whose existence is unknown to many people on the mainland, will one day irrevocably end Northern Ireland.

Look at the rest: British troops withdrawn; British surveillance withdrawn and dismantled; scores of IRA prisoners released; real continuing threats to prosecute British soldiers; a *de facto* amnesty for any IRA criminals as yet not prosecuted ; the abolition of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and its replacement by a politically corrected unroyal body with no specifically British characteristics, which could easily be merged with the Republic’s Garda Siochana; the disbandment of the RUC’s Special Branch, especially effective against the IRA; the almost total removal of signs and symbols of British rule, the Crown of St Edward and the Union Jack, from cap badges, documents, official flagpoles and government buildings; the abolition of any kind of oath to the Sovereign for the taking of seats in the Stormont Assembly or the taking of office, and its replacement by an ‘undertaking’ of wondrous vagueness.

And in return? Nothing. Just a ‘decent interval’ between the crisis and the catastrophe, during which even the slowest learners on the Loyalist side gather that their absorption into a 32-county Republic, almost certainly ruled by Sinn Fein, with its unique ability to raise money in the USA and the prestige it will win from this achievement, is only a matter of time. My favourite fact about the Belfast Agreement is that Sinn Fein’s representatives at the talks did not even sign it. Who was going to make them? They had won. They would win even more at the St Andrew’s Agreement eight years later in October 2006, since when ‘dissident’ Republican violence has largely ceased.

And the IRA itself? It hasn't gone away, you know. Nobody, apart from a Canadian General, has ever seen any evidence of IRA ‘decommissioning’ of the great piles of guns, ammunition or explosives supplied to it by Colonel Gaddafi of Libya. None of the ‘dissident’ IRA groups which seem to have access to guns and bombs has ever been disciplined by the Provisional IRA, though it undoubtedly has the knowledge and power to do so, and such action would be in the tradition of Irish republicanism. If the evidence of decommissioning is so persuasive, why on earth is it so secret? And why is no ‘dissident’ outrage, however dreadful, permitted to ‘disrupt the peace process’? We all know that any British Army return in force to Northern Ireland would instantly bring the whole thing down.

You too can work out the obvious answer. If any British government were rash enough to slow or obstruct the steady movement towards total capitulation, we would find out fairly quickly that there are still plenty of weapons in Ireland, and quite possibly on the British mainland too. Not that they will do anything of the kind. They have surrendered, and surrendered armies do not take up arms again. As so often, the most interesting evidence is from dogs that do not bark in the night, rather than from those that yap noisily by day.

So Martin McGuinness died as the victor, the man who beat the British Army and the British state, our conqueror. Here we pose, with our Trident missiles and our troops supposedly ‘facing down Putin’ in Estonia, and our seat on the UN Security Council, not to mention our endless harping on about World War Two, now more than 70 years in the past. But in the end we were brought low by a small and vicious murder gang, and of course by the support it received , first unofficial, later official, from our supposed chief ally and ‘shoulder to shoulder’ best friend, the United States.

That is why this ghastly, bloodstained man was given tributes in Parliament today, why reasonably well-informed people equated him with Nelson Mandela, and why the poor Queen had to meet and shake hands with the person whose organisation murdered her husband’s uncle.

And yet we still cannot admit it. The historian A.J.P.Taylor was very right when he said '‘Countries that have long been great powers shrink from admitting that they are great no longer’ . And so they do. Think on these things.

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You claim to detest the loyalists, yet you have not once criticised Ian Paisley, a man who not only condoned loyalist atrocities, but inflamed tensions with his ghastly rhetoric regarding Catholics. It appears you unfortunately have a bit of a soft spot for those who bear equal responsibility for the bloodshed.***PH writes: Haven't I? OK, Paisley was an unscrupulous sectarian demagogue who, when his principles came to be tested, happily sat down to cooperate with the grisly terrorist Martin McGuinness.****

I'm just a reader/contributor, here, who can't quite understand how you arrived at your conclusions about Mr Hitchens. I'm Australian, and living in Texas.

"I’m not sure whether ‘blended’ refers to inter-breeding with Scots, Irish and so on or the more exotic fauna to fetch up here and which others in this blessed ‘partnership’ are still permitted to escape unremarked, so perhaps you could define ‘nation’."

@ thepheasantpluckersson "Am I offended? I suppose I dislike unnecessary rudeness. Most people *are* very blended by now, so your obsession with "Englishness" as some kind of very pure thing strikes me as over the top. I can understand patriotism, for sure. It seems clear to me that PH likes Britain very much, but I have never thought of him as hating England. That strikes me as untenable."

If you’re stung by alleged ‘rudeness’ then you’re offended by definition.
Furthermore the author’s animosity to England is far from ‘untenable’ if you actually think it through.

Britain is not a country but a political arrangement, one designed from the outside to bury England. This man’s attitudes to Scottish and English self-rule are so utterly, illogically at variance with one another only ill-feeling can explain them. See the damning quotations on ‘One Step From a Banana Republic’. This is my second reply, so I’m guessing any further elaboration would jeopardise this attempt too.

You’re real difficulty is with English nationalism judging from the silly pejorative ‘obsession’, but then English people defend everyone’s corner barring their own. It’s for the same reason – an agreeable sense of sharing borne of a self-despising ordinance and concomitant need to be liked – they cling doggedly to the ‘Britishness’ that has no constituency outside their own country and even, where convenient, christianity, which camouflages their weakness [a suspicion no longer attaching to the Cornish Pastor of course now he isn’t English any more].

People like you want people like me to shut up. They want us to stay silent and not make a fuss as the country is dismantled in front of our very eyes. What sort of 'patriot' does that make you?

I’m not sure whether ‘blended’ refers to inter-breeding with Scots, Irish and so on or the more exotic fauna to fetch up here and which others in this blessed ‘partnership’ are still permitted to escape unremarked, so perhaps you could define ‘nation’. We’re unmistakably related to our own in spite of decades of damaging immigration I assure you.

@ thepheasantpluckersson Am I offended? I suppose I dislike unnecessary rudeness. Most people *are* very blended by now, so your obsession with "Englishness" as some kind of very pure thing strikes me as over the top. I can understand patriotism, for sure. It seems clear to me that PH likes Britain very much, but I have never thought of him as hating England. That strikes me as untenable.

@louiseyvette: "I would have thought we're all pretty blended at this point in history."

You're missing the point, responding to a light-hearted remark when my aim is to expose the true, shifting agenda of this faux 'conservative'.

PH once commonly sought to remind us that England is the oldest nation state in Europe and worth defending. Now, unaccountably, we find him swinging Brussels' Regional Directive wrecking ball with what appears to be equal enthusiasm, courtesy of a recently divulged Cornish 'heritage' that implies a view of the county and the country as separate entities [which they haven't been for centuries whatever Samuel Johnson said].

There was no reason to drop this into a discussion of Irish politics. It just doesn't make sense - unless you accept the proposition I've outlined elsewhere that PH secretly hates England, in which case he'd probably be happy with the sundering our ancient homeland so long as the favoured 'nations' of Britain escape the persecution to be visited upon its 'regions'.

I'm sorry you're offended, but whatever you 'would have thought' doesn't make thinking it a testament to accuracy. Women mistake feeling for thought all the time and respond accordingly. I'm not sure there's anything anyone can do about that but thank you for replying.

Thank you, Peter, for a brilliant exposition of the truth of what really happened in 'resolving' the conflict in NI and also on the character of the recently canonised saint, Martin McGuinness. As a former RUC SB officer, I watched this unseemly conspiracy unfold at close quarters over many years, choreographed chiefly by HMG, the Foreign Affairs Dept of Leinster House, a creepy cohort of Irish Americans and of course the arch hypocrite, Clinton. A truly shameful episode in the history of these islands.

Terence Courtnadge, thank you for your reply. I'm sure you're right. I happened to be reading what Cobbett said on the same day that I was reading this article, and was struck that he and PH seemed to be saying much the same thing.

Cornishman? Not Douglas Murray [according to wiki]. Who then? You don't mean yourself? Well I'm blowed. I knew you were more blended than single malt but this is getting ridiculous. Nor am I sure how 'Cornishness' affects one's view of Irish politics necessarily, but this way at least you can stop pretending and look to promote regionalism every chance you get [what next? 'Englishman (or in this case Yorkshireman/Brummie/ Cumbrian, delete as appropriate)?].

Others may recall the valiant effort in one of your books to insinuate a further dilution of English identity into the mainstream with the [capitalised] term 'Black English' so we know how diligently you work at these things. Pity Cornish people don't exist. The prospects for 'independence' in a county made up of superannuated English second homers on the hunt for a 'celtic' heritage and a payday to go with it [funded by those from whom they demand separation naturally] never looked so daunting.

"A combination of foolish Irish politicians with their insistence on an 'Irish dimension', and cynical American Democratic Party politicians scrabbling to win back working-class Catholic voters who had deserted them over abortion, decided that the Utopian and sentimental goal of Irish unification was in the end far more important than the actual conditions in which the people of that beautiful island shall live."

If I recall, you stated in an earlier article (sorry I can't find it) that Washington's main motive in arm-twisting a peace accord in N. Ireland was to facilitate Britain and Ireland's entry into the EU, which would have been awkward with a 'hard' border in place. That theory at least makes a bit of sense; more so that the identity politics theory at any rate.

"Meanwhile on the BBC and in many other parts of the media yesterday and today he was equated with Nelson Mandela and praised for his supposed 'statesmanship', though most managed at least to mention his less loveable side as a Godfather of murder and torture."

As I recall, Mandela and some of his other ANC comrades also went through a militant phase, though perhaps not as long as that of McGuinness & Friends.

"Nor is the ‘peace’ of the toady who silences his true feelings because he is afraid of the violent man who has invaded his home and gets what he wants there by menace."

Surely you're not equating Irish nationalists with invaders!

"None of the ‘dissident’ IRA groups which seem to have access to guns and bombs has ever been disciplined by the Provisional IRA, though it undoubtedly has the knowledge and power to do so, and such action would be in the tradition of Irish republicanism."

Are you advocating that Sinn Fein engage in illegal vigilante justice here? They co-operate with the PSNI in identifying and bringing these dissidents to justice, which is precisely what any law-abiding citizen with information ought to do.

"Just think, if labour win the next election, Emily Thornberry and Maria Eagle, with absolutely zilch knowledge or experience, would outrank and order about the entire British military machine, "
Posted by Dermot Doyle

Speaking of incompetent politicians with zilch knowledge or experience, did you know that Donald Trump didn't know what was better for the economy; a strong dollar or a weak one ! Even I have some clue that it depends on the circumstances and what you're hoping to achieve. And I'm not even the leader of the largest economy in the world. Can you imagine?
Of course we're all human. He can't know everything, but why ask a military man like his former National Security Adviser?

And did you know that Mr. "Art of the Deal" couldn't pass the Republican bill to repeal and replace the ACA, even though his party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress? Wowzers, talk about incompetence. And his poor little attempt at banning Muslims has failed twice now. Sad.

I found it very interesting to hear the news coverage of McGuinness's death. It seemed to me that the summary of this man's life was viewed through rose tinted glasses and political correctness at its best or worst, it's most successful anyway. Having lived in London throughout the years when we expected a bomb to be hidden in a dustbin at Christmas time on Oxford Street, and anywhere else the rest of the time, some view him differently. It was in the language of modern PC that presenters too young to have lived through that time, just about managed to mention his evil deeds but as usual, in the modern age, no blame or sense of outrage or right or wrong was within the modern way of media speak. Some repeated poor Mr Tebbits reaction to the news, but again carefully absent of any support for his views. It was the usual, carefully scripted, neutrally bland reporting apparently aimed at people who knew little about the situation and hadn't lived through the violence. Instead "Commander McGinness turned peacemaker" is how he is to be viewed. Revolting and cowardly.

The road to power is usually a violent one. The strongest win but over the years like to be regarded as reasonable and peaceful men. And they garner respect because there is some kind of safety and reassurance in having them as authority figures and having them on your side with the threat they could reek. They offer a protection service without which we would be unsafe in our beds!.

Surely there's a "reason behind a reason" that you're not acknowledging here?

If your outlook on humanity is a positive and optimistic one, then you will be liable to maximise the impact that decisions will probably have on the present day and the immediate future, and to minimise the impact they will probably have further in the future. In other words, you will tend to be very short-termist in your deliberations, because you are mentally not persuaded that principles are as important as many people think they are in determining what happens in the future.

On the other hand, if you are more sceptical of humanity's ability to make good decisions "on the hoof", as it were, you will be much more concerned with figuring in the longer-term consequences of ones decisions, and particularly so if there is a likelihood that these future consequences will work in the opposite direction to the consequences envisaged in the shorter term.

And so people don't take different stances as a result, necessarily, of one or the other side following a thought process which is inferior to the other. It is more often the case that the qualities of the thought processes are equivalent, and that the wide difference in the conclusions reached is the result of a very simple difference in ones basic outlook on humanity.

Regarding the question of Britain surrendering to the IRA, the organization's accepted that the people of Northern Ireland have a veto on reunification, a position that used to be anathema even to constitutional nationalists such as the SDLP (see the 1973 border poll, boycotted by Irish nationalists of all stripes). This is a fundamental concession.

The Blair Creature merely finished off a process that had begun years before in the late 1970s when British secret agent Michael Oatley began meeting McGuiness.
Britain hasn't wanted the problem of Northern Ireland, not least since it has become a huge economic drain after de-industrialisation.
If McGuiness conquered the British it was because the British enabled him to do so.

You say he lived in a free society and thus had no need to resort to political violence. That is a laughable statement, and someone like yourself should (and I suspect do) know better. McGuinness was born in a gerrymandered city, where most people of his background had no vote and ZERO hope for the future. Discrimination was rife in education, housing, and employment. The B-specials were nothing more than a state-sponsored paramilitary and the RUC was not much better, even as I was growing up. Any expression of Irishness was stamped out ruthlessly. The loyalist paramilitaries had been attacking and shooting dead Catholics long before the formation of the PIRA. McGuinness did try the peaceful path initially. He was part of the civil rights movement, which the state and protestant mobs attacked repeatedly. Former Prime Minister Terence O'Neill was chased from office and is still seen by most Ulster Protestants as a traitor for his attempts to reach out to the catholic population.I have read enough of your writings on Ireland to know you are a reasonable man and have no animosity towards the Irish people. But you seem to take his and the violence of Irish republicans out of context.

If the Good Friday Agreement was such a sell out and a surrender can someone explain to me why hard line Loyalists like the Revd Ian Paisley signed up to it?.Not only signed up to it but also went on to a friendship with Martin McGuiness a man whose terrorist organisation had tried to kill him at various times.Obviously when people actually live in Northern Ireland things look differant than from this side of the water.

PH notes: The author of the words below has stated ( and declined to withdraw it though given many opportunities to do so) that he believes the foundation of the Provisional IRA murder gang was 'morally justified'. I believe that any sensible person can therefore safely ignore anything he has to say about the Irish question***

A contributor says:

'There comes a point where you just have to let go of what you thought should have happened and live in what is actually happening. Otherwise the endless circle or resentment and retaliation is simply perpetuated forever.'

Mr Hitchens responds to this:

'This is the sort of thing collaborators tend to say (see above). It is also of course deeply immoral, as it places material comfort above principle. Surely Mr L'Eplattenier has some qualms about the installation of unrepentant murderers in government?'

Would repentant murderers be okay?

I have no doubt that ordinary people - the unprincipled scum who selfishly put 'material comfort' (another way of saying safety and security) ahead of principle – wanted the killing and violence to stop, regardless of which persons were in government jobs. So Mr Hitchens would consider ordinary working people, with families and young children, collaborators?

What makes Mr Hitchens's comment so unpleasant is that is presupposes that ideas are worth more than actual living humans.

When a family takes safety over principle – because they care more for their children than they do for the principles of those who don't have to live in the violent places themselves - they are smeared as 'deeply immoral'.

It should be noted more often, that for religious persons, what's 'moral' has nothing to do with the happiness, safety or security of humans beings. For the religious, a massacre could be 'moral' so long as the circumstances were just right.

(In biblical terms did Douglas Wilson once describe Hurricane Katrina as 'holy, righteous, just and good.)

When a person believes that after you are dead, you continue to be alive in another dimension, it becomes very easy to be shockingly callous about the lives and 'material comfort' of others.

> PH replied: "Obscure clauses are always the ones to watch out for. What are they doing there, if not to be activated?"

I cannot believe the constitutional status of Northern Ireland will be determined in this legalistic fashion. I don't care what is berried in the Belfast Agreement; the government will act on the will of the people. The most recent poll I could find for the RoI put united Ireland support at about 33%. The older generation are more in favour and they die off every year on both sides of the border.

> "Clever Unionists are quietly leaving."

Unionists are leaving NI? Where for? Have you evidence for this claim?

PH: For the mainland. I note this in the large number of NI students I meet in mainland universities.Why would they go back? Something is certainly happening. In the 2011 census 48% identified as Protestant, and 45% as RC. Unionists have lost control of Belfast and in the last election came close to losing Stormont. Polls said before 2014 that there wasn't much support fro Scottish independence. In the campaign, the secessionists came close to winning. In the EU referendum, Leave, backed by Unionists, got 44% Remain, backed by Nationalists and Republicans, got 56%. It don't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. I am amazed at his complacency. When the Union falls, it will fall fast. ***

Mr Hitchens writes: "In general, my view of Ireland is that some sort of sensible Home Rule arrangement should have been made in 1914, but that the largely Unionist North-East should have been excluded from it. That part of Ireland should have been ruled from London, with no devolved government greater than county or city councils."
I wonder, however, whether this solution was ever possible in view of what actually happened in Ireland between 1914 and 1922. Indeed, I don't believe anyone advocated it at the time, although I am open to correction on that point.
My own view is that the British government should and could have intervened much more in Northern Ireland from the 1920s to the 1950s in order to redress the legitimate grievances of the Catholic population. After all, it held the purse strings. However, it didn't want to know. (It wasn't even possible, under a ruling from the Speaker, to raise Northern Ireland's problems in the House of Commons until the 1960s.)
Another "solution", of course, was that offered by Churchill to the Irish government in the bleak summer of 1940: annexation of the North in exchange for entry into the war, a proposal wisely rejected by the then Taoiseach, Mr De Valera, especially as the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Sir James Craig, was not consulted!

louisevette, your comment :
Yes, William Cobbett, very wise man and an arrangement could have been made in that very decade, the 1820s ; if Ireland had been given full governing powers but kept the British Monarch as titular Head of State of all 32 counties with Britain not interfering, all but a marginal few of both main religions would have been able to live with it ; it would have been the best or perhaps the least worst settlement. Academic now of course.

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